Church records

The church, by virtue of its position as one of the great medieval institutions,
was also a great record-producer, and because the church (as a whole) survived, where individuals
and many families did not, its records have been preserved better than many others. This includes
records already discussed that are not specifically religious in character - for example
the charters transcribed into monastic cartularies and the
manorial documents relating to church property. Another example
is the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts over wills, which began
when they were primarily concerned with pious bequests, but continued until the 19th century.
As well as these, there is a host of other records, more or less loosely associated with the church, which
can be useful to the genealogist.

First, parish registers - the most familiar modern source for genealogists - should not be forgotten,
as in principle they can extend as far back as 1538. In practice, few survive this early,
and the information in early registers can be very brief - for example, baptism entries may not name the
parents, and marriage entries have even been known to leave the wife anonymous.

The bishops' registers, which extend well back into medieval times, are another useful
ecclesiastical source. Apart from (obviously) containing a great deal of information about clerics,
they also include material relating to the population at large, such as occasional marriage licences
and wills. Among other potentially useful entries are those relating to chantries -
endowments provided for masses to be regularly sung for the souls of specified people -
which may give genealogical details about the founder's family. A number of bishops' registers have been printed
(often in the original Latin), particularly by the Canterbury and York Society.
The papal registers also contain useful information along the same lines - 14 volumes of abstracts from them,
relating to the British Isles, have been published.

The papal registers contain many entries referring to
consanguinity (or cousinhood) between couples.
Since third cousins and those more closely related were,
in theory, forbidden to marry, dispensations were often necessary
to permit marriages or to allow couples to remain married.
Normally only the degree
of the relationship is specified, rather than the full
genealogical details. But these records can still provide very useful
clues, particularly if the parties' ancestry is fairly fully known
already, leaving only a small number of gaps to be filled.

Bishop's registers also record the appointment (or institutions) of clerics to parishes.
These records can also be useful, because the right of presenting the new
incumbent, called the advowson, was frequently held by a layman - often the lord of the
manor - and his name will normally be given in the record of institution.
Advowsons were treated as hereditary possessions - in inquisitions
post mortem they are often mentioned along with manors and other landed property.
If an advowson had to be divided between coheirs, the
presentations would often alternate between them, and records of this sort can be quite informative.
Records of many medieval presentations are printed in Newcourt's
Repertorium, for the diocese of London -
they are also often given in the older county histories.

Monastic records

Religious houses were also a fertile source of medieval documents, many of which fortunately survived
the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. Cartularies have already been
discussed. As well as preserving copies of the charters of their benefactors,
religious houses often recorded the dates of their deaths. These notes were usually
connected with the commemoration of the anniversary of death, so that - irritatingly
for the genealogist - the year of death is often omitted.
Often, the monks also wrote accounts of their founders' families, which are among the earliest English family histories.
Unfortunately, they are also among the worst -
J.H.Round describes them as a 'class of narratives notoriously inaccurate and corrupt' - and they should be
treated as secondary sources to be confirmed (or otherwise) by the records.
A number of them were printed, with many charters and other material, in Dugdale's Monasticon.

As well as being among the first family historians, monks were among the earliest political and military historians.
Medieval monastic chronicles developed from brief notes of important events for each year,
into detailed narrative accounts of historical events.
Of course, the medieval historians can hardly be expected to be accurate about events
that were distant from them in either time or space.
The chronicles are most valuable when they are contemporary, and particularly when the writer benefits
from local knowledge. Though the chroniclers' focus is obviously on events that are 'notable' in some way,
their narratives are sufficiently detailed that they mention many of the knightly, or manor-holding, classes.
They may also include references to relatively obscure local events, especially if the interests
of the monastery were involved. One example that deserves to be singled out, because it contains
so much genealogical information about the Norman aristocracy in the otherwise barren period
immediately after the conquest, is the
Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, an English-born monk of St Evroult in Normandy.

D.M. Smith, Guide to bishops' registers of England and Wales:
a survey from the Middle Ages to the abolition of episcopacy in 1646 (London, 1981)

Many bishops' registers and associated records have been printed by the Canterbury and York Society
(94 volumes, 1909-2003; in progress). Bishops' charters from the 11th to the 13th centuries,
are being printed in the British Academy's
English Episcopal Acta
series (42 volumes, 1980-2013; in progress).

Some medieval marriage licences can be found in bishops' registers. Separate series
of licences begin in early modern times. A number of collections of early licences have been published
- including those issued by the Bishop of London, from 1520; the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury at London, from 1543;
and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, from 1558
- and are available on CD-ROM from
Archive CD Books.

Introduction to Sources.
Ecclesiastical Courts [formerly at http://www.xea95.dial.pipex.com/intro.htm;
not available, 28/10/2001;
see the Internet Archive's
copy
of this page, from August 2001] (Chris Potter)

The following outline of the historical development of the law of advowsons is available online:

History of advowsons
(Parish of Rayleigh) [formerly at www.parishofrayleigh.org.uk;
see the Internet Archive's
copy
of this page, from March 2004]
Part 2 of a dissertation by the Rev David Parrott, Situations Vacant

Many presentations are noted in the following work:

R. Newcourt, Repertorium ecclesiasticum parochiale Londinense:
an ecclesiastical parochial history of the diocese of London ... continu'd to the year of Our Lord, MDCC ...
(2 vols; London, 1708-1710)

The Durham Liber Vitae Project (University of Durham/King's College, London)Project - still at an early stage - to produce a digital edition of a medieval list of those commemorated at Durham Cathedral Priory. The website includes a useful set of Bibliographies relating to this and similar documents.

The following are a few of the printed works (there are many more):

J.S. Moore, Prosopographical problems of English libri vitae,
in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics, ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 1997)

D. Rollason, A. J. Piper and M. Harvey, eds,
The Durham Liber Vitae and its Context (2004)
Collection of papers by various authors discussing the Liber Vitae
and related records

A.J. Kettle, ed., A list of families in the Archdeaconry of Stafford, 1532-3
(Collections for a history of Staffordshire, 4th series, 8; [Stafford,] 1976)
A much later listing, almost of the proportions of a modern census, believed to have a
partly commemorative function

The English Monastic Archives project (University College, London) has compiled partial catalogues of the medieval records of English monasteries - including material such as charters, manorial documents and historical/biographical writings - and provided lists of the estates of each house. The information can be searched, or browsed by the name of the house, county, time period and other criteria. Though work has now finished, unfortunately the records appear to be only a selection, and even the coverage of monasteries is incomplete. Moreover, as so often with British academic projects, the website subsequently disappeared and the current version lacks much of the original functionality. In particular, search results are presented as lists of xml files, whose titles betray only minimal information about their contents.

The following are also available online:

Monastic Matrix (Ohio State University)Searchable database of women's religious communities, 400-1600, containing summary historical and bibliographical information on each. The database can also be browsed in several ways - for example, by geographical region.

The Cistercians in Yorkshire (Sheffield University)
Project in progress to provide online resources relating to the five Yorkshire
houses of Fountains, Rievaulx, Byland, Roche and Kirkstall. Much of the emphasis is on the architecture and on
three-dimensional reconstructions of the monastic buildings, but there is also historical material on the
order in general, the Yorkshire houses, with biographical sketches and a glossary

Medieval hospitals were religious institutions, having originally the function of providing hospitality
to travellers, and later evolving into places of refuge for the poor, sick or elderly.
The following online article gives a brief overview, and includes a list of medieval hospitals in Oxfordshire:

In medieval times household chapels were maintained by many people from the manor-holding
classes. A useful resource relating to these chapels is in the course of preparation:

The
Household Chapel in Medieval England, c.1250 - c.1450
(Kent Rawlinson, University of Durham)
[not available, 16 December 2007; see the Internet Archive's
copy of this page,
from January 2007]
Currently a searchable
Preliminary Handlist of Household Chapels from Medieval England is available.
Eventually A Descriptive Gazetteer of Household Chapels from Medieval England
will be published online - some sample entries are already available. Much of the emphasis is
architectural, but the gazetteer will include historical outlines and bibliographies.
[not available, 16 December 2007; see the Internet Archive's
copy of this page,
from December 2006. Unfortunately the search facility will not work in the archived version.]

Another published listing of medieval historical sources in progress is the Repertorium Fontium
Historiae Medii Aevi (Rome, 1962-2001). Volumes covering authors A-O have been
published to date, and an online index to the Repertorium
has been provided by the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo.

M. Chibnall, ed., The ecclesiastical history of Orderic Vitalis (6 vols; Oxford, 1969-1980)
Parallel Latin text and English translation
Note that a 19th-century French translation is available in PDF format at the
gallica website
(numbers for "Recherche libre" field: N094617-N094620)

Many other chronicles have been printed - mostly in the original Latin, without a translation -
in the Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages ...
(usually known as the Rolls Series) (99 works, many in several volumes; London, 1849-1911)
Most volumes of the series are available in PDF format at
gallica (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)